Edward Carpenter was an important English socialist thinker, philosopher, mystic, gay activist, and poet in the 19th and early 20th century.

He was a friend and correspondent with many of the important writers, philosophers, and mystics of the era, including Whitman, Tagore, Gandhi, Jack London, and Annie Besant.

Carpenter's best known political work was Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure in which he argues that civilization is akin to a disease, something that no culture can survive more than a few centuries. Building on new ideas of psychology and sociology, Carpenter prescribed a personal and societal "cure" that involved a deep connection to the land along with spiritual development. Many of aspects of his "mystical socialism" were influenced by Hinduism and yogic philosophy.

Edward Carpenter also spoke up for gay rights and more open sexual ideas in the rigid Victorian society of his day. His book, The Intermediate Sex is an important early text of lesbian and gay rights thought in the 20th century.

Towards Democracy is his primary collection of poetry. Much of the writing here has a prose-poetry quality, similar in style to Tagore's Gitanjali or the works of Gibran, but Carpenter's poems have his own unique blend of social, political, and spiritual currents.